“How dare they steal my father’s skybarge?” Nefertiti said hotly.
“Can we outrun them?” Jake asked.
“For a while,” Shaduf answered with a shrug. “Maybe even long enough to reach the Great Wind. But they’ll be right up our tails by then.”
Jake turned in the other direction. The smudged line of sandstorms was still miles away. “Then what can we do?”
Shaduf waved an arm over the scrambling crew. “Try our best to survive.” He handed a spyglass to Jake before returning to Horus and Politor. “Take a look. Seems like Kree really wants that pretty rock of yours.”
Jake stepped to the rail and raised his spyglass, adjusting the focus. His friends flanked him to either side. The barge swelled into view. It looked like an entire army gathered atop the deck, ten times the crew of the Breath of Shu. He spotted archers with longbows, a trio of catapults at the prow, dozens of giant crossbow cannons.
Not only were they outnumbered … they were outgunned.
A pair of figures stood at the bow. Kree and Heka. As Jake spied on them, he saw the witch’s head snap up and stare straight at him.
Jake tensed, but his hatred kept him rooted in place.
From a fold of her robe, Heka pulled out her small wand made of bone and held it aloft. She waved a clawed hand along its length—where even from here Jake could make out the black shadow of the bloodstone at its tip. Something dribbled from the claw of her hand to the crystal. He could guess what it was, what that dread stone always craved.
Blood.
The end of the wand began to smoke with shadows. The witch bent down and blew on the crystal as if trying to extinguish a candle’s flame. Smoke blasted out from the wand’s tip, shattering into a thousand bits of shadow—then vanishing.
Jake did not know what sort of alchemy was being cast, but it couldn’t be good. He lowered the spyglass.
Pindor held out a hand for his turn. “Is it as bad as it looks?”
“Worse.”
Pindor stared down at the spyglass—then handed it over to Marika. He plainly would rather not look.
“Make ready to turn to starboard!” Horus bellowed from the stern, keeping a hand on the ship’s rudder. “On my mark! Go!”
Gears were cranked, the wings below shifted, and the ship tilted to the right.
“Why are we turning?” Jake asked. “That’s only going to slow us down.”
Nefertiti leaned over the rail and pointed ahead of the ship. “The Flame Forest. No one flies over it. We must circle around it to reach the Great Wind.”
Jake didn’t see the danger. In fact, he didn’t see any forest. The land ahead was covered thickly with white crystalline rock formations, like giant versions of the salt crystals he grew in his earth science classes. Some climbed hundreds of feet up in the air, reflecting the setting sun.
As he studied the strange landscape, he saw that the air above the formations shimmered with heat and had a greasy pall to it. Then a pillar of flame shot into the sky, twisting like a fiery tornado. It hovered in the air for several seconds, then fell away. Moments later, another two blasted skyward, one reaching nearly as high as the ship.
He remembered the danger zone marked with a flaming skull on the map. Now he understood why they were turning. Curious, he borrowed the spyglass from Marika and took a closer look.
Before he did so, he spotted the royal barge making the same slow turn. No one wanted to fly over that flaming field. Focusing down on one of the rock formations, Jake saw why it was called a forest. The branches of giant crystals, tangled and sticking out at all angles, did sort of look like tortured trees. There even seemed to be clusters of berries hanging in rows from the lower branches.
“It is where we harvest our firefruit,” Nefertiti said, nodding to the red gourds used to fuel the ship’s forges. “But it is dangerous work. Takes a steady hand and great skill. Pluck one that’s too ripe, knock one cluster into another, and boom.”
Jake lowered the spyglass and stared at the roaring flames shooting into the balloon.
“According to the old stories, the forest used to be far larger and much tamer, planted and tended by the Grand Magisters of Ankh Tawy. Since the city’s fall, the forest has grown wilder, slowly consuming itself.” Another twisting tower of flame blasted into the sky. “Eventually it will burn itself out.”
Shouts rose from the front of the boat and drew everyone’s attention forward. A black storm rose ahead of them: smoky thunderheads that climbed high into the sky. All knew it to be unnatural.
Jake remembered the spell cast by Heka, dark shadows driven into the wind. It seemed that those seeds had taken hold and grown into something monstrous. But what was it?
A piercing screech cut through the air between the two windriders. Heka was screaming from the bow of the royal barge. Her call came echoing back—from the storm clouds, from a thousand throats.
“Harpies!” Skymaster Horus boomed out.
Jake raised his spyglass toward the storm. As the view zoomed to him, he saw that the captain was right. The sky was packed with the churning, writhing bodies of thousands of beastly creatures. The witch had given a clarion call to the harpy horde, drawing them out of their nesting grounds in the Great Wind.
What had Marika called the witch?
A grakyl brood queen.
Jake stared at the storm rolling toward them, screeching for blood. Like a queen bee, Heka had summoned her hive to battle.
Jake turned to see the royal barge closing in behind them.
Pindor’s eyes shone with fear, but he was never one to miss a clever bit of strategy. “It was a trap all along,” he said. “And we flew right into it. They’ve boxed us against the Flame Forest. There’s nowhere we can go. Death lies in every direction.”
“Maybe not,” Jake said. He ran toward Horus, leading the others.
Busy rallying his crew, the skymaster frowned as Jake confronted him. “What do you want?”
“I think I know a way to escape this noose.”
Horus was ready to wave Jake away, but Shaduf urged patience. “Hear the boy out.”
As Jake explained his idea, the doubtful look on the skymaster’s face changed to horror.
“That’s pure madness!” Horus said.
Shaduf, already half mad, only grinned.
Politor nodded. “It might work. And it’s not like we have many options.”
Outnumbered, Horus stared to either side of the ship. The Flame Forest was on one side, the storm of harpies on the other and out in front. The royal barge had closed in behind.